TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #490: How Woke Took Over America with Andrew Gutmann

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Marty sits down with Andrew Gutmann to discuss his Substack article on the link between fiat money and woke ideology. Andrew's website: https://andrewgutmann.com/ Andrew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrewGutmann Andrew's Substack article: https://andrewgutmann.substack.com/p/how-woke-took-over-america 0:00 - Intro 5:05 - Andrew’s background 11:30 - Andrew’s Substack piece 17:54 - Commercial banks and the Fed 21:34 - How fiat causes wealth disparity 28:30 - Turning the tide 31:40 - Gradually, Then Suddely 32:19 - Point of no return 34:57 - Bitcoin and energy 41:17 - Educational institutions 49:31 - Competency crisis 51:57 - Homeschooling 54:13 - Powell 59:20 - Hyperinflation 1:01:04 - Wrapping up Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zaprite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Talent Co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Gradually, Then Suddenly⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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them to tftc send you and enjoy this rip okay you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. actually most of my economics and finance books are still in boxes what are what economics books do you need to get up there oh no i have i mean when we moved i couldn't i couldn't unpack like two-thirds of my books because i didn't have room so they're all all the uh well i don't know hundreds thousands i don't have any yeah economics congressmen that understand economics we need more them that's why i'm happy yeah that you're running for well my first day i mean you you know my i don't know if you knew this my first job was at the federal reserve really i did not know that we can talk about that if you want i thought i'd get a ph so i don't you know we can talk about

that i'm happy to give my background and you know whatever else is is helpful but yeah i was there in the greenspan years interesting uh the greenspan and then i wrote a um and then this i have on here which is somewhere you know i wrote a finance textbook how to be an investment banker yeah for john wiley and son so yeah well andrew we're recording this is great context for the conversation what was it like working for alan greenspan at the federal reserve well i was a junior guy uh so i was my first i i have an undergraduate degree in economics from the johns hopkins university in baltimore and then had a professor visiting professor of economics who was a full-time

economist at the fed and said you know this would be kind of fun place to work you should should apply and so i wound up working as a research assistant which is a sort of like a two-year kind of like an analyst program on wall street for people that most of whom go on and get phds which i thought i do and decided not to but it was kind of a fun first job out of uh out of undergrad i was working on in the group that studied u.s manufacturing put out uh capacity utilization numbers industrial production numbers working on stuff that went into the fomc um you know preparation book that you know would then help them decide what to do with interest rates uh so you know greenspan i never had a significant opportunity to uh talk to i mean

we used to see him in the elevator used to hand off uh research to him sometimes he was a big tennis player i never got the opportunity to play tennis with him but uh got to play with his doubles partner actually there was a court at the federal reserve because he used to play all the time so i can't i can't say i have too many good greenspan stories i was there when he gave his famous irrational exuberant speech i think in 96. well greenspan himself's really interesting in terms of uh former fed chairman because he had a a change of heart in the context of the importance of sound money versus the importance of the Fed really stepping in

and trying to facilitate monetary policy via manipulation of interest rate and the monetary base. Yeah, I agree. So I'm very, we'll talk about mostly, I think about the piece I wrote about why the Fed is responsible for destroying the world. But I kind of go back to when did it start? It started with the 87 crash where he had just taken over from Paul Volcker, you know, who was the one that, you know, had had clamped down on inflation after the late 70s and early 80s.

And Greenspan took over 87. You had the crash and Greenspan said, well, we're not going to let Wall Street fail. And, you know, put a lot of money, a lot of Fed money into the economy. And that became known as the Greenspan put, you know, later, I guess, just the Fed put, which, you know, was effectively the policy that took over everything the Fed does, which is to say we're never going to let the financial system fail, collapse. We're never going to let Wall Street fail. We're never going to let big banks fail. And I think that was a mistake. That's a huge mistake, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But I go back to Greenspan and the Greenspan put in in 87. Obviously, you can go back further and say, you know, it starts with the founding of the Fed, you know, 100 years ago. But I think that was the big change, the 87 crash.

And it's interesting learning about your experience there because my experience out of college, I studied economics undergrad at DePaul University in Chicago and then went on to work at a commodity trading advisor. We were fun of fun of CTAs. And as an analyst, that was part of my job was reading the Fed tea leaves, reading the Bank of Japan tea leaves. We trade a lot of currency markets. And so I would go to the large, prominent chief investment officers of these massive commodity trading advising funds and ask them. It was 2012, 2013. So right when Yellen was coming into the Fed as chairwoman, we were going through Operation Twist.

And then the beginning of QE2, and as a young analyst at 21, 22, I was asking these CIOs naively and just thinking back, like the fact that I had the balls, like ask these CIOs these questions, like, are you guys worried about like the Fed's manipulation of markets? And they all hand waved it away. And so like after Greenspan had put the put in place, it had become normalized by that point in 2012, 2013. And it was just sort of the expected way that things operate at that point. And to me, as a young man who lived through the great financial crisis that intuitively just did not make sense to me, around that same time is when I found Bitcoin and decided to really dive down that rabbit hole because I had the juxtaposition of Fed policy with Bitcoin, which has this hardened policy embedded in the protocol. And it just made a lot more intuitive sense to me. Yeah, I mean, 08, 09 was interesting. I mean, I was had left Wall Street at the time I worked as an investment banker for a while, starting in 2001 when I graduated business school and then was following the 08-09 crisis pretty closely.

I don't think, you know, anyone, and certainly myself included, is expected to see, you know, the amount of money that the Fed printed and, you know, the levels they went to bail out the financial system in that time period. Yeah. And it's had many perversive effects, which is what we're here to talk about. You wrote this incredible piece on Substack. What was it about this time last year, maybe? um when was it it was uh april 11th of uh of last year it's almost exactly a year 11 months yeah yeah but it's something i had written i you know i i wrote a lot about economics for the last 15 or 20 years um i i had a blog that called ibankingfaq.com which was at the time back this goes back 15 20 years a site for undergraduates and mba students trying to break into investment banking and sort of a Q&A, an FAQ on what investment bankers do and the interview

questions that you get asked. And then I started to think, well, I should do the same thing for economics. And so I launched a site called Economics FAQ. My goal at the beginning was to try to answer all the, you know, Econ 101 type of questions. And I have a very different view of Econ 101 than most economists. And I didn't really have the time to do that. And then I just kind of started writing longer pieces about economics. And I'm very critical of obviously the Fed, but also of mainstream economics, both micro and macro and behavioral economics.

And then I've been writing about this stuff for a long time and with a very sort of free market libertarian bent to everything Austrian economics, I would say really. And then when the whole woke stuff started and getting aside, but I wrote a letter that helped ignite what became the parents movement three years ago in the fight against woke education. And I've lived and breathed kind of the last three years

of this woke stuff. And something that I've thought about for a long time is that, you know, it's really money and central banking policy that was at the root cause of the woke takeover of society, of the world really. So, and there, you know, it's a complicated argument, which, you know, we can talk about the different aspects of it,

But I really believe it's the incentives that easy money has changed in the world that created so many, not all, but so many of the issues that we have today. Yeah. And I think for the first 10 years that I've been in Bitcoin, a lot of the focus of easy money has really been focused on the wealth disparity that it's created in the country, the cancel on effect. that's really what a lot of bitcoiners and me personally have focused on uh i've been writing a newsletter and doing this podcast for seven years now so for a vast majority leading up to 2020 it was all focused on the perverse incentives of money printing on the wealth disparity and its effect on asset prices but i think what you really hone in on your piece and i think what many more people become more privy to it's like much more pernicious than this wealth gap it it actually has social effects as well well yeah no i i think you know i came at this i think

that's exactly right because i wrote a piece for the economics faq blog years ago what are the root cause of income inequality um you know income inequality is sort of a you know an issue of the left and they blame capitalism and the right says no it's not so bad we don't really have it and i think that's wrong i think income inequality i said pre woke pre-2020 that income inequality and this wealth disparity that you refer to is really the greatest problem affecting america and probably the world and i wrote this i think it was like a 20 000 word piece on that the root cause of income inequality is easy money is the federal reserve and the other central banks of the world and so this piece about you know how woke took over america

the first part of that story is exactly the income inequality and the wealth disparity aspect of this so i think that's a key part of the message because you know one of the and we can talk about what the mechanism is for why the income inequality increased and the wealth disparity increased but the one of the ways that the left gets people to go woke or to unfaithful let me let me take one step back i mean i define woke differently than i think most people most people think it's just this idea that there needs to be you know we have systemic racism social justice we need equity to kind of remedy that and i believe woke is fundamentally a rejection of america's founding values it's a rejection of free speech a rejection of free

markets and capitalism rejection of individual rights of meritocracy a rejection of objectivity but if you really want to boil down what woke is some people call it marxism i would argue it's it's not exactly marxism it's an update or offshoot of marxism it's really anti-capitalism And the reason that the left is able to get so many people, especially young people, on their side is because of the wealth disparity and because of the income inequality. And they say, well, it's capitalism that doesn't work. It's capitalism that has created this unfair system we have, especially for young people. I think it is an unfair system. I think it is a big problem of wealth disparity and income inequality.

But again, my view is that the root cause is not capitalism. it's the failure to have capitalism and the most important reason why we don't have capitalism is because of the central bank uh by controlling interest rates which is the most important price in the economy the price of money and so i came about this you know before i was writing about woke was writing about how you know the fed was the biggest and most important cause of the wealth disparity of income inequality and to the uh the marxist offshoots credit it is a really uh potent um approach to convincing people that it's capitalism's fault you really corrupt capitalism at its core with the the price of money via the manipulation of interest rates by

central banks and then you lead everybody at like a pied piper and just point at the wealth disparity and say this is capitalism this is capitalism it's like we don't live in a capitalist society from a first principles perspective no no we that's exactly right right from a first principles perspective we don't and not only because of central banking controlling interest rates but you know because of regulations because of unions because of other things as well but the biggest factor by far is the manipulation of interest rates money is literally the most important tool that we use it's one half of every transaction it's like it's pretty no it is and i think you know it's it's in some ways i mean you

probably talk about this every week i mean in some ways money is simple it's stuff we can use to buy things you know i mean economists have you know more complex definitions unit of exchange store value whatever but effectively money is something you could use you know to buy things with um but but it's much it's you know on the other hand it's it's kind of much more complex and i think so very very few people you know even economists understand how important it is how important interest rates are what the true drivers of inflation are what the mechanism is for, you know, money creation, which is, you know, much more by the commercial banking system than it is by the Fed. And this is why it's not just simply

the Fed having low interest rates. That's only part of the story. It's this Fed not willing to let banks fail and not willing to let the financial system fail that basically told the banking system, take as much risk as you want, don't worry, we'll never let you fail. And that's where most of the money is actually created, not by the Fed, but by the banking system. And capitalism, you know, go back to, you know, Schumpeter, any creative destruction, capitalism doesn't work when you don't allow things to fail. And that's the situation we're in, where the Fed does not allow bad decisions to be punished and you have to have that for capitalism to work yeah and i think it's really important to

focus on the commercial banks and their part in expanding the the supply of money throughout the economy because that's also another very effective tactic that the the marxist offshoot has it's like like well it's actually not the fed it's the commercial banks and as you state like the fact the fed is there as a backstop creates this perverse incentive for them to go print as much money as possible so they're intertwined at the hip i mean the commercial banks technically own the fed as well so yeah i mean you have you you you effectively have your your what four i think four big banks now i mean you you effectively have a nationalized banking system um and it's the industrial policy you know a lot of people we don't have an industrial policy in this country

like you know communist country would in fact we do it's really the financial more than anything else it's the financial services sector to some extent tech as well um but you know we're moving towards you know having a nationalized banking system you got four big banks now you have another financial crisis and they're inevitable um and i think uh you know you can't time it and i don't know it could happen next year it could happen in you know a generation but you'll have more financial crises down the road and you're going to see continued consolidation to the point where i think we have a nationalized banking system that's the path that we're on so i agree i mean you cannot separate what the central bank does with you know the big banks and the banking

system now they are they are joined at the hip like you said i'm trying to think i want to go on a tangent about new york uh community bank corp and the fact that steve mnuchin and this consortium of private equity players had to step in to bail them out but i think we save that for later in the show to focus on this topic and uh the the role of central banking in woke culture because i think it's a very important topic to to really cover in depth because you mentioned um it's not only seeking into the financial sector it's seeking into this tech sector as well um and so you have it's every sector but yeah yeah finance and tech i'd say that the ones that are most impacted but i'll tell you the story so you know the story i tell about income inequality

you know it's obviously a simplified story which is in so you had again you know the green spam put the the idea that you're never going to let the financial system fail and that where does that come about we should take a step back which is they they learn the wrong lessons from the great depression and the lessons that they learned from the great depression was that it was the fed's fault and if they just had more liquidity if they would have printed more money we wouldn't have had a Great Depression. Not understanding that it was easy money that really caused, and other things, but more than anything else, easy money that really caused the Great Depression. But then you kind of go to the late 80s and early 90s. And China, most importantly, but other countries

in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, opened up their economies and started manufacturing stuff. And I don't know, somewhere between, you know, maybe somewhere over a billion people, maybe between one and two billion people, join the global workforce. And what that should have had is a deflationary effect on the prices of stuff that we buy, because everything that, you know, you and I would go buy at Walmart, maybe you're too young, but, you know, saw cheaper prices. And that's the kind of good deflation. The Fed doesn't believe there's good deflation. The Fed is absolutely terrified of deflation, believing that it's always monetary. This was a this was actually good deflation.

So what the Fed said is that, well, we don't want deflation. We're going to keep printing money with this idea that, you know, we should have a I don't know if this was an explicit policy. Then it became one a little bit later. You know, instead of even having price stability, we should shoot for two percent inflation. And so the Fed keeps printing money. They keep their foot on the monetary accelerator spigot. And the money has to go somewhere because, again, most of the stuff that we buy at Walmart, prices were going down because of China and globalization. And I don't blame globalization per se. So the Fed keeps printing money. And it goes, broadly speaking, four places. It goes to financial assets.

And that's where the huge wealth disparity comes into play. And then the money goes to the three major categories of things that we can't buy at Walmart, that we can't import from China. And those things are real estate, education and health care. And we saw real estate, education and health care prices dramatically exceed inflation. You know, if inflation was two percent, you know, somewhere around two percent, they were probably six, eight, 10, 12 percent of those things. And that is what what crushed the middle class, because we lost good jobs. We started outsourcing manufacturing jobs, which didn't also have to happen. And that's where you kind of get regulation and unions come into play. We didn't allow wages to fall or we wouldn't take care of legacy pension costs at steel companies.

So we wound up closing steel companies instead of allowing compensation and wages to fall, let's say 20 percent. Instead, we lost entire industries and wound up outsourcing them. That shouldn't have happened. So, you know, the lower and the middle class lost good jobs at the same time. Health care costs, real estate costs, cost of education and universities accelerated to an enormous degree. And that absolutely crushed the middle class. And this is where, you know, led to, you know, like Donald Trump being president in 2016, because he was the only one speaking to, you know, this huge segment of America. And we saw the same thing in Europe that had absolutely gotten, you know, crushed by economic policies. So that's where I, you know, I kind of separate the income inequality into, you know, the rise of the 1 percent or the 0.1 percent, which was the inflation of financial assets. and then the middle the middle class really getting crushed here and it's not that because

of wages fell it's because we let and subsidized prices to rise um so they're you know the cost of living went up too high so that that's sort of my you know the short version of the income inequality story and again what i said earlier and we both said is that you know that's how they get the young people to blame capitalism you know young people who have these ridiculous student loans and can't afford health care and can't afford you know to buy a home like previous generations could well that goes back to the federal reserve but they are taught and indoctrinated in schools to blame capitalism for that it's not capitalism it's the lack of capitalism so that's sort of the income inequality right and when you lay it out it's extremely pernicious when you

think about it that's like is he maybe globally globalization you know it wasn't that they were to hurt people and that's the thing about you know economists and the fed they like most people i mean they mean well they believe these models work they believe they're doing the right thing they do not understand if they don't understand econ 101 no i think i mean it's like you enable globalization so you take out all the good jobs you print a bunch of money can tell in effect kicks in financial assets explode wealth gap increased uh you take all the good jobs and you and you tell people, you know what, to get a really good job, you've got to go to university, so you get hundreds of thousands of dollars

into debt, and guess what? You're going to have degree inflation there, and your degree is not going to be as competitive or worth as much when you go eventually hit the job market. Then on top of that, we're going to subsidize high fructose corn syrup, making you extremely unhealthy, but you're going to increase your health care costs once you get out of college and into the workforce and eat this industrial sludge.

Pretty much, that's right. Yeah. And then on top of that, we're going to tell you you're a bad person if you believe in the nuclear family and that you don't agree to all the cultural concessions we're trying to force on you. And if you don't. Right, if you don't transition your kid and, you know, all these things. Yeah. I don't want reparations. Yeah, you're a bad person.

And guess what? The banks control monetary supply. If you don't go along, they'll cut off your bank account. Well, that too. Right, right, right, right. Social credit scores and systems. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

all this all this stuff becomes related i mean in the piece i wrote that you referenced you know how woke took over america you know i get the question all the time is you know what's is there a james bond villain right is there one that is there a klaus schwab is there bill gates you know george soros you know is there one evil it's so brilliant the left's takeover of the world is there one you know evil genius behind it and the answer is no i mean again i think you know the incentives caused by monetary policy and easy money is is the most important root cause but it you know it's not that there's an evil genius i think you know trying to take over the world it's you know so many different aspects using the incentives for their own purposes um you know and in the end what

happens is you know they're trying to tear down western civilization which is you know what what i think is happening um do you think we can turn back the tide at all do i think we can turn back the time well you know i'm running for congress in florida i've never something i never ever thought i do i never had any political aspirations and i said you know what we need good people to step up who understand what's going on and very few people do and understand what it takes to fight back and you know have the courage to fight back to try to turn the tide and try to save this country and save western civilization and that's my mission i'm you know one person can't do it i don't even know that it's necessarily doable but i know that we've we've got to try because

if we lose we're in a new dark ages and we are losing you know this this battle right now so um you know we're trying but but this is where you know the education is so important is that we've gotta educate americans and even educate you know our political leaders um about what are the correct root causes because i think you know from the you know the money perspective and the monetary policy perspective almost nobody understands this almost nobody understands how pernicious easy money has been and how how much it has you know affected you know our economy in a bad way they don't they don't understand that at all and i think that's a product of just the complexity of it all i mean especially as time goes on if you look at all these facilities that

the fed is is putting forth a btfp um you had the ripping out of reserve requirements in 2020 going back to post 2008 QE1, Operation Twist, QE2 it's just all these buzzwords and complex financial arrangements between the Fed and the banking system and then

preferred dealers as well it's just so much to unpack and unravel it's almost it's too hard to overcome just from the point of trying to actually understand how it all works oh it's incredibly you know the actual mechanism of fed activity or central bank activity is

incredibly complex and there's no way the average you know person is going to be able to understand that but just but i think even the you know the very very basics of what easy money or what even you know just money how it impacts the economy and how easy money impacts the economy and how it subsidizes and picks winners and losers that's something that is not that hard to understand you know we we you know again in econ 101 they don't really cover this because i don't think they get it right but that's something that i think we can educate people on you know what what does easy money what does subsidizing high risk investments do you know what is printing money do it's got to go somewhere the money has to go somewhere where is it gone what is the impact

of that? You know, what is the impact of inflating financial assets? What is the impact of telling banks, take any risk you want, because we always have your back, we'll always bail you out. That's not that hard to understand. But no one, you know, very few of us are saying it. And we've gotten many more people explaining it and saying it. Quick break here, freaks. This rip is brought to you by Gradually Then Suddenly, a framework for understanding Bitcoin as money by Parker Lewis. I wrote the foreword to the book. I'm honored to have done so because it's the best zero to one primer if you're looking for a logical explanation of why Bitcoin obsoletes all other money. Buy one for yourself and maybe a few for your friends. Go to the safehouse.com slash gradually. That's

the safehouse.com safe spelled S-A-I-F. The safehouse.com slash gradually. Use the promo code TFTC for $5 off at checkout. Buy it now, freaks. The price of Bitcoin is going up. You need to understand it. This is the best zero to one primer. Back to the show. What I worry about that we're we've reached a point of no return in terms of the fed has put their foot on the gas pedal and they've essentially put the car over the uh over the ledge and what they have to do is just like push the gas pedal through the floor and hope that the car can fly and oh i think that's right oh yeah no i think there there is no pulling back from this and this is why i've said you know for 30 years you know this isn't going to end well sooner or later i i mean honestly i thought

0809 would be the end i didn't expect them to be able to bail out the system i mean the amount of money they printed you know during those couple years and you know zero interest rates or even negative interest rates around the world for the you know for almost 10 years um what was dramatic it's going to happen again every bailout and there's been so many and again i go back to 87 There's been so many, many of which we don't even remember. Every one has been bigger than the one before. I mean, how much bigger can they get? So I think it is inevitable that the system collapses.

Again, I'm not going to say it's this year. It might not be for a generation. Like I said earlier, I don't think you can time it, which is why it's very hard to trade it. You know, you can't short the market if it's going to take 30 years for the market to crash. You can't maybe protect yourself with alternative assets like, you know, Bitcoin and others. But I think it's inevitable that, you know, I don't know if I'm allowed to curse here, but, you know, sooner or later, the shit hits the fan. It's going to happen. This is not, you know, there's no way for them to pull back from this.

They have gone fully into this, you know, kicking the can down the road. Every time there's a crisis, they're going to employ the playbook, expand the playbook of money printing and bailing out Wall Street. Yeah, and it's even more daunting when you consider the fiscal side of things. It's only accelerating. Oh, yeah. Oh, we've got, you know, 30, whatever the number is, 30 plus trillion dollar debt, you know, we're running trillion dollar deficits. You know, the interest now, you know, when interest rates were 1% on treasuries, it's one thing now they're much, you know, 5%. It's not sustainable. We've got, you know, welfare system, we've got, you know, Social Security and Medicare that, you know, politicians aren't allowed to talk about because you get in trouble if you say you're going to ever change it or cut benefits or expand retirement ages. But it is completely insolvent. It is completely unsustainable.

I mean, sooner or later, we're in trouble. There's no question about that. Plus, you know, birth rates are low. We're not working. We're living longer, working less. You know, there are a lot of problems here that make the whole financial system, the whole economy unsustainable. And so you mentioned Bitcoin as an alternative asset. What are your thoughts on Bitcoin more broadly?

Because that's obviously everyone shows Bitcoin shows. Yeah, I'm going to concede. Yeah, you know, I don't know. It's not something that I have. I wrote a piece on it actually years ago. A little bit skeptical that it ever actually becomes money. In other words, it can be used as a speculative asset. Maybe it's a somewhat of an insurance policy like gold is to a lot of people or other hard assets.

um you know somewhat skeptical that it ever can replace you know the kind of money we have now um so i i can see it i'm not all that knowledgeable about bitcoin or crypto in general obviously it's that we're at a record high again i don't know when this will air but i think we hit record high again with bitcoin you know this week um you know i in my early days when i was actually reading a But I don't have so much time now. And I was really into this idea of going back to, you know, what they used to call free banking, which is actually have banks print their own currency and ending, you know, the government monopoly on money, which is effectively what crypto and Bitcoin does, which I think is obviously a good thing. We need alternatives to, you know, central banking money or government monopolistic money. But, you know, I am skeptical and don't kill me or don't have your viewers, your listeners.

i can't promise what the viewers will do i won't kill you don't worry okay you know i i don't i don't i i think government can shut it down which is which i worry about any crypto for that matter or they can at least if not shut it down prevent it from being utilized you may be able to utilize it for certain things but as far as utilizing in a store they can say look to a store we saw this in covid where they were you know shut down businesses um for lots of reasons we lost more freedoms you know those couple of years and i think we ever had in our 250 year history and i worry they can say to a you know a place of business you know we'll shut you down if you accept anything other than you know u.s currency and so i you know worry about that a little bit

i think you know the um energy consumption issue um i don't know if that's being dealt with differently now i mean it's so energy intensive for for mining um but i think it's interesting I mean, again, I think all alternatives to central banking money, I'm thrilled to see them because I'm not a favor of central banking money. Yeah, Hal Finney, who was early Bitcoin and the first ever individual to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi back in 2009, he wrote a blog or a forum post in December of 2010. Hal's no longer with us, but in this forum post on BitcoinTalk.org, he basically said, at scale bitcoin's not gonna be able to scale you're not gonna be able to have everyday transactions on the protocol level what we will see is a free banking system built on top of bitcoin where you have all these private banks that have bitcoin as a reserve asset and they

issue maybe something like charming e-cash tokens on top of it i i love that idea you know and what you could have in a real free not that we're likely to happen at least maybe after not until there's a crisis and there's a real you know we need a reset not the you know great reset they talk about but i think at some point we're going to have a reset but to have a free banking system where you do have money backed by bitcoin you might have other banks say we're going to back it by gold or something else that's what i would love to see you know real competitive money not just competitive banking but competitive money and if bitcoin winds up being the most stable effective you know backing for money that'd be fantastic and if it's something else you know

like gold or something else fine um but i think that that's from a libertarian and and you know know a in a free market perspective i think that's what would be the ideal kind of money out there competitive money yeah it's happening it's happening right now it's monetizing in real time and to your energy consumption point that's actually where i think the signal is because the mainstream narrative that bitcoin mining is bad because it consumes a lot of energy is really completely misunderstood it does use a lot of energy we're going to use a lot more energy And that's a good thing. But what you find is due to the hyper competitive nature of Bitcoin mining, they are forced via economic incentives to find the lowest cost electricity possible. And what you find is that that's typically wasted or stranded energy sources, whether that's substations that have excess capacity or not utilizing or natural gases otherwise being flared. that's one of the first companies i started in the space that's what we did we went to the bakken we

went to oil and gas producers that were flaring a bunch of gas and um flaring above what the epa was allowing them to so they're getting fined we're like hey we'll solve your problem run it through this generator we'll mine bitcoin with it you can monetize this what we're going to find what we are finding particularly down here in ercot um with these mining operations that plug into the grid and participate in demand response to make sure that residential consumers can get electricity during times of peak demand is that it's actually bolstering the balance sheets of these utilities companies and these these grid operators so that they can go reinvest and build more infrastructure so i think bitcoin mining does consume a lot of energy we're gonna consume

a crazy amount of energy at scale when when this does succeed but it's gonna be good because it's going to mean that we have a cheap abundant energy future yeah that's fascinating no i didn't know that i mean this is again where i'm probably less knowledgeable than any of your listeners about this um but that is very interesting to hear no andrew you didn't know this but i invited you on the show connect so i can accept these ideas in your brain so when you get on capitol hill you can begin um pushing this narrative at uh at the federal government level yeah that sounds good No, we'll meet in person and we'll talk more about it. But no, no, again, I'm not, you know, it's not, you know, we're so busy with the campaign.

I haven't had a chance to, you know, keep up on everything, even a lot of the economic stuff that I used to really keep up on and write about. But, you know, this is not one that I have been able to focus on for the last couple of years. It's really interesting to hear what, you know, this is cutting edge stuff and to hear what is really going on rather than, you know, the narrative that you may read once in a while in the mainstream media, which, as we all know, is not always the true narrative. no no i think like that's what i think this country needs right now too is like a an optimistic thing to point at and work towards which i'm interested to get your because it seems like the country's in a state of disarray i think it's uh appropriate to say that uh if you look at we got problems we've got we've got a lot of problems there's not a lot of hope out there and so i guess on that

line of thinking like what do you think we have to be hopeful for as a country like what should we be striving for well look i mean we're still the you know freest most prosperous country in the world safest i mean you know we're we've got talent we've got enormous resources we've got good people that want to do the right thing you know it's not all doom and gloom i think we have political class that isn't necessarily you know generally isn't leading us in the right direction you know we've got this elitist takeover of the world and you know again our freedoms have been taken away in many respects over the last few years censorship you know all these issues again a lot of these issues which do go back to you know what i wrote about about the woke takeover and

and the impact of monetary policy in in that um but we look there's a lot of innovation there's a lot of smart people around doing interesting things there's a lot of people with good ideas so it's not like uh you know there isn't reason to be optimistic uh but i do think and this again why you know why i run for political office is a lot of these problems are going to have to be solved politically um you know some of these bigger issues and you know and the woke stuff which i believe you know has really taken over you know most of the institutions of our country that's that's what's most scary to me and especially in terms of education because you indoctrinate kids you know at harvard and penn and universities it's one thing you start doing it

in kindergarten and you basically indoctrinate them not only is america bad but capitalism is bad that's what really frightens me about the long term and we've got to change that we've got to fight back on that how pervasive is that problem very pervasive sadly very you know i i had a piece and i don't know again i don't know when this airs i had a piece in today's new york post about the private school indoctrination the elite private school k-12 indoctrination but it's in it's in every school and the reason it's almost in every school public private even religious schools and much worse in a place like new york city or on the west coast or the northeast you know certainly much better or less worse in a place like you know texas and florida but even in red

states i mean the entire education system has been taken over by this very progressive ideology and it is run by progressives not just teachers but the whole ecosystem of education and that's not going to be easy to to take back but we've got to try i mean the left took you know as they say it took generations really to march through the institutions and we're going to have to have a counter-revolution and do the same thing we need to build new institutions but we can't just give up on, you know, the K through 12 schools and the public schools and the universities because the vast majority of Americans' kids are going to continue to go to those schools. And so we've got to, we've got to fight back. In Florida here, they just, DeSantis just

passed legislation to, you know, teach the evils of communism in kindergarten. I'm not sure that might be too young to do that. The idea is right, is that, you know, we talk a lot about civics education. We don't have it. We don't teach about our government. I think the most important part of civics education which i think they get here in florida is you know it's less about checks and balances and about the you know executive legislative and judicial branches of government and it is more about you know why capitalism and freedom and and you know classical liberalism are right and why communism has been a disaster every place that's been tried in in history so i am again kindergarten might be too young to to uh to do that but i think the idea is right we need to

you know be doing that more broadly uh because because right now kids are being taught that you know capitalism is bad and evil and that our country is bad and evil and that's a real problem it really is and you mentioned like rebuilding institutions obviously with penn and harvard in the news cycle for their their woke policies it's been a really interesting conversation because a lot of people are talking about like we need to go into harvard weed out all the bad actors and rebuild that institution and i've been thinking about this just behind the scenes just um the whole concept of rebuilding institution and what is an institution i think um a lot of people that want to like go into harvard to weed out the communist and replace it with free market thinkers

to rebuild that institution or thinking about it wrong the institution is really the idea veritas truth like um and it's it's letting go of the prestige of a harvard a pen if you will and really anchoring back to the first principles ideas that these institutions were originally built on you don't necessarily have to go in and fix harvard specifically you just have to get these ideas out there and erect a new institution on top of the ideas that they they were founded on. Well, you know, in that piece, you know, how we'll talk over America, I talk a lot about how education, you know, got taken over both K through 12 and universities. But again, going back to, you know, I think I had five or six ways why the monetary policy

led to this takeover. One of them was the income inequality story. But another one is that, And it's obviously related is that for the last generation or even two generations, most smart people in this country didn't went into finance and then tech. Why? Because salaries and finance and later tech were, you know, enormously, if not orders of magnitude greater than salaries they could make elsewhere, including in academia. So, again, the subsidy of Wall Street, which we didn't talk about, also subsidized tech over the last 20 or 30 years. What it wound up doing is it stripped out or denuded almost every other field of not just smart people, but people who would likely be on the side of free markets and classical liberal values, conservative values. And so science, medicine, politics, journalism, and especially academia, smart people don't go into them anymore. Very smart people. They go into finance because they can make a lot more money or they go into tech because they can make a lot more money. So when we talk about, you know, to go back to what you were saying about taking Harvard back, you know, we all have seen statistics on, you know, the ratio of Republicans to Democrats or the ratio of people on the left to the right in universities. And it can be anywhere from, you know, six to 10 to one, in some cases, 100 to one or to zero.

in a lot of the social sciences, you don't have any Republicans, you don't have any conservatives. Well, you know, we have a problem is that there are very, very few academics on the right or even in the center in this country, because for two generations, people who would have been those kind of academics, especially men, have been sucked into finance and tech. So that is also not an easy problem to solve. Again, to me, that goes back to subsidizing Wall Street. It inflated salaries on Wall Street and in private equity firms and in hedge funds and in investment banks and, you know, and in big tech and in tech startups. Until you strip the money out and let those institutions fail, that should fail. And again, I have nothing against, you know, tech and

I have nothing against finance, but you got to stop subsidizing it. And until you stop subsidizing it, you're going to see those inflated salaries, which means you're not going to see smart people in other areas that are important to society like academia. So taking back Harvard and Penn is not easy because we don't necessarily have the people that can teach the right things anymore or very few of them well that's another scary prospect i discussed this last week on the show but the competency crisis this misallocation of capital and skewing the incentives in such a way where it forces people into tech and in finance i mean we're and i'm guilty as any you know i was a finance guy and then a tech guy i mean i'm you know i'm as guilty as anybody but you follow the

same same same and you can't blame people for following the incentives but i mean we could wake up in a generation maybe two generations and literally not have the engineers that are capable of maintaining the society that we've built up over the last couple centuries like literally can't replace the pipes can't drill the oil can't run the nuclear facility like if incentives are skewed for long enough you literally lose the knowledge of how to do this stuff which is oh yeah and it's you know and it's scary it's scary medicine especially we're seeing you know localized medical schools which means two things it means who you're letting in um as well as the smart people that are no longer going into medicine but now you're lowering the standards

significantly and then what you're teaching them you know you you start teaching them you know dei related stuff you stop teaching them anatomy and it's very scary you know you think about 10 20 years going to see your doctor that's completely unqualified so you're right the whole you know the infrastructure of the country is under attack by this ideology and it is it is frightening yeah just look at what's happening with boeing right now look at it look at the it's snuck into the air force we had matt lowmeyer on the show a couple months ago who went on capitol hill to blow the whistle on there's dei quotas they want to reduce the number of white male fighter pilot lighter pilots from 87 to 60 some arbitrary percentage and it's not merit-based it's

the whole retreat from a merit-based society again a communist society uh retreat away from merit towards communism is not playing out well for us right now no and i you know we're we're still in the beginning stages of it and that but we've got again we've got a fight to to take that back but that's why i said what is woke it is fundamentally rejection of those founding values including meritocracy yeah and we've had a war on merit for you know goes back to really you know the beginning of affirmative action uh you know 50 or 60 years ago yeah do you think it's so bad there's a period of time where people probably need to homeschool their children to teach them this stuff from scratch and then um make sure yeah i mean yeah i mean i tried actually to homeschool my

daughter for a couple of months it was you know with a with a 14 year old girl it's hard you can kind of it's easier to do it in the younger years um we're seeing a lot more people homeschool now people that never used to do it it was a demographic tend to be very religious people that would do it we're seeing way more people even in places like new york city do homeschool or do homeschooling you know small pods and co-ops i think that's a trend that's going to continue you know for a long time because the schools have private and public have deteriorated to such an extent. And it's not only just the woke stuff that's infiltrated. It's also the fact that, you know, they're not teaching just, you know, literacy rates and math rates. We see this around

the country are abysmal, the number of kids that are reading and doing math, you know, proficiently or on grade level. And people see that. People saw that, you know, with COVID closures, that schools were closed for so long, you know, and it became apparent that, you know, the schools and the teachers unions don't have the interest of kids at heart. And so you saw a lot of parents pull their kids out of the school system and homeschool. So, yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of it. I think families that can do it should do it, but I'm also not, you know, I'm also understanding of the fact that it is not easy to do. I mean, it requires an enormous amount of time and effort. It's almost impossible to do if you have, you know, a two-parent working, you know,

two-income household. You really need someone doing it full-time. So, it's not something that, you know, most families can do, but I think for families that can do it, uh yeah i think you can get a much better education you can educate your kids much better in a you know in less time so i'm a i'm a proponent of it but it's hard yeah i'm about to find out i've got a four-year-old son i think i'm gonna i bought the uh how to read in 100 lessons book i'm gonna that's gonna be my foray into homeschooling and sitting down good luck trying to teach him how to read let me know yeah let me know how it goes no no i again i think with young kids it's obviously a lot easier and they get to middle school high school that gets a lot a lot

tougher but um i i wish you luck in that i'm i'm glad to see more and more parents doing it thank you i'm gonna need it um yeah we'll see we'll see how it goes but um before we wrap up here since you formerly worked at the federal reserve and been following this for decades what are your thoughts on the current position that jerome powell and crew find themselves in obviously we a cpi print that was higher than expected today nycb had to get bailed out by this private equity consortium uh last week or the week before they've already signaled that they'd like to lower rates but with inflation running hot um and a banking crisis that seems to be bubbling up again do you do you envy jerome powell's uh position at all right now no look i i don't i don't envy

Jerome Powell's position. But then again, I'm critical that I don't think he, maybe he's better than others. He might have been better than Bernanke or Janet Yellen. But again, I don't really think they understand how the economy works. I think they are stuck now. They're sort of in a holding pattern. My guess is they're praying nothing bad happens before the November election because they're going to get, and I'm sure have been getting, tremendous political pressure from the Biden administration, you know, to lower interest rates. I mean, I think you're starting to see the housing market slow down. You know, people can't get mortgages, mortgage rates or whatever they are three times as high as they were, you know, a year or two ago. I think they

had, you know, had been closer to lowering rates again. And I think you're right. I mean, the CPI numbers today makes it, you know, almost impossible to do it. They've sort of been able to play the narrative that they succeeded in this, you know, Goldilocks soft landing. Again, my view is that sooner or later it's it's gonna come it's gonna come crashing down i mean you can't not have you know commercial real estate's a disaster um i mean that's a ticking time bomb again you know people can't get mortgages and so you're gonna have to you're gonna start to see at some point pressures in the financial markets which means they're gonna start lowering they're gonna reinflate and you know who knows um but this is this is the cycle that they're in that they put

themselves in again, not just in the last few years, not just from, you know, the financial crisis of volume at a nine, but I go back to, you know, what is now 30 plus 35 plus years of they're never going to let wall street fail. Every time there's, you know, the hint of a crisis, they start to reinflate. And this is just a cycle that never ends. So someday it's going to end. So I, that was my very long winded answer to say, I think they're, you know, in a holding pattern kind of stuck um you know i don't know we'll see yeah it feels like um they're finding themselves in a situation that spider-man was in at the end of spider-man one where the green goblin is gonna drop mary jane or the the the car of people uh above the above the hudson river

and uh so the fed's gonna have to choose like uh do we keep fighting inflation or do we save the banking system uh and this isn't a superhero movie i don't think they're gonna be able to save both and so now well there was also the you're probably too young the original superman with christopher reese which is probably the best superhero movie i think um same same kind of thing where lex luther kills two two uh like nuclear weapons or rockets or something one to the east coast one to the west coast superman promises he's going to save someone's mother his girlfriend's mother or something on the east coast and therefore they destroy all of california but what he's able to do is fly around the earth really really fast go back in time so he can save

So, you know, superhero movies, you can do it. I think the Fed, the Fed's always going to bail out Wall Street. Always. You can be assured of that, you know, until they can't, until it just becomes the money spigot. It just doesn't work. But they're going to keep trying to bail out Wall Street. And I think what people always have to remember is you can't separate monetary policy from politics, which is, you know, every Fed chairman gets pressure from the current administration to do what? To lower interest rates and to print money. And that's always going to be the case. You know, we I think you might have touched on this earlier. I mean, this yes, the Fed theoretically is supposed to be independent. I mean, that's just not the reality of the world. They are just another arm of the government. To some extent, they're an arm of Wall Street, but for sure they're going to get political pressure. If you see any slowdown of the economy, you're going to get pressure to print money again. And I think that's, you know, we'll see over the next few months leading up to the November election what happens.

But yeah, they're stuck. They're in an unwinnable situation, but they put themselves in that unwinnable situation with, again, the way they've been operating for many decades. yeah i mean you had biden i believe at a campaign event earlier this week say hey we're gonna get and we're gonna get those people to lower lower that rate like saying it explicitly he's so out of his mind that uh he doesn't even recognize that he's not supposed to say that explicitly but um it's supposed to be well yeah he doesn't he doesn't you know i don't know what he recognizes but but every president wants easy money yeah uh last question word that cannot be said hyperinflation is that uh is that a possibility here because you said reinflate oh yes it's not even really reinflating it's continuing inflation that's not been solved

i look yes i again i think someday and that could be tomorrow and that could be not even on our lifetimes but probably somewhere in between you're gonna have the system blow up like a very, very close, you know, almost did, or really did in 08, 09. And there's two possible paths. You know, one is the hyperinflationary path. And one is the hyperdeflationary path where we default. I mean, effectively, they're the same thing. They're both effectively defaults. Which way they go, I think it could go either way. You know, when I was writing on this more frequently, and I used to always get asked for investment advice I never gave, again, because You never know timing. But, you know, how do you protect yourselves from from that kind of situation?

I don't know how you protect yourselves. You know, they say in a crisis, all correlations go to one. And so I'm not sure there are any safe assets. Maybe Bitcoin is maybe gold is maybe, you know, farmland is I don't know. But I do think it's inevitable. We have a financial crisis that the Fed can't print its way out of some day. And for sure, that could wind up in hyperinflation or it could go the other way. And either way is going to be very, very painful. There's no way out of the pain sooner or later. We just, it's unsustainable what central banking has done. And not just in the United States, but around the world.

You know, the debt levels are unsustainable. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Andrew, thank you for getting this message out there. Um, with that being said, like, is there anybody who's listening to this that could help with your campaign? A lot of Floridians listen to the show. What, uh, what should they, where should we point them to learn more?

Yeah. Um, my website is andrewgutman.com, which is a G U T M A N N one T two N's can learn about more me in the campaign. Read my brewery letter that went viral three years ago, helped ignite what became the parents movement, uh, reach out, love to chat. If anyone wants to contribute to the campaign, that's fantastic. we don't we don't think bitcoin would probably should i don't know if that's allowed under federal rules but uh but andrewgutman.com and uh and on twitter at andrew gutman so reach out

well andrew keep fighting the good fight um i wish you well throughout the rest of this year we need more individuals like yourself in the halls of dc despite uh the fact that we may not like dc and capitol hill i think it is well i don't like like you said capital hill you have to play the game uh we need better people in these positions yeah you're a good person we need good people to do it so uh well thanks for having me it was a lot of fun to do this yeah well good luck thank you thank you i'm gonna need it um that's all we got today freaks peace and love